by 
You have a few options on this one, you can go down the route of customizing your own site or you can work with a vendor such as Shopify. Here at Appath, we love the real feeling of ownership that you get from building your store from scratch, so I’ve put together a step by step process to help you on the way to doing just that.
Step 1
Create a business plan. I’ll assume you have this already done if you’re researching eCommerce options, however if you do need any assistance with this please do get in touch and I’ll be happy to provide some reference material.
You’ll also need:
A domain name
A web host
A dedicated IP address and SSL certificate: SSL is the Secure Sockets Layer protocol that encrypts the data between the browser and the website server; it’s essential for data protection. Many web hosts will provide you with a free SSL certificate, but the issue here is that these will generate warnings in the browsers that the SSL cert doesn’t match the domain name. This will result in a wary customer and a lack of confidence in your product/service. You really need a private SSL cert if you want your customers to trust you and for this, you also need a dedicated IP address. This is simple to arrange and you can contact a registrar such as Namecheap who will install your cert for less than $10 a year.
A shopping cart script: Installing a shopping cart is an obvious crucial part of building your store. Most web hosts will offer the open source osCommerce script as a free and quick install and there are others you can compare online if you wish.
Payment Gateway/Processing: You’ll need an online payment processor so that you can accept credit cards. Payment gateways will validate the credit card and process the transactions in real time, taking a cut of the payment and depositing the remainder into your account. You could go down the route of setting yourself up as a credit card merchant and do it yourself, but payment gateways are much easier to set up and implement. Remember, you want to make this as streamlined as possible for yourself. PayPal is the most obvious option as it integrates with most major shopping carts, there are no set up charges or monthly fees and transaction charges vary between 2.2 and 2.9% depending on your sales volume. However you can also research other gateways depending on your specific sales volume and your transaction needs.
Step 2
Creating your Website: Once your domain name and website host are running, you can set up your sites homepage and other static pages following the standard process of creating a website.
Step 3
Install your shopping cart
SiteGround.com has an excellent tutorial on osCommerce installation (click here to view). However as I mentioned earlier, most sites will offer to install this for you which makes the process very quick and easy.
Step 4
Customize your online store
Most shopping systems will have a range of management features and customization options available to you, which can sometimes seem a bit daunting if you’re unsure of what to focus on. In osCommerce, the first thing to do is to add a header and remove the osCommerce footer graphic. In the admin panel, go to Configuration > Store Logo to save a new store logo. To remove the banner graphic, go to Tools > Banner Manager in the admin panel and delete the osCommerce banner. Then click here for a simple tutorial detailing how to remove the footer branding also. For further administrative management, go to Configuration > My Store to set things such as your country zone etc.
Step 5
Category and Product Set up
osCommerce sets up an electronic store for you by default, but depending on your product, you may need to customize the categories. Using the online interface to do this is pretty simple, just select a category/product image and enter in the extra details such as the description etc. If you have a lot of products, you may want to utilize add ons (e.g. Easy Populates) that allow you to import from an Excel or CSV file and bypass the interface. You just need to download the add-on and follow the instructions for installation.
Step 6
Order fulfillment and Shipping
For the payment options, you can install modules for each payment gateway and for shipping you can specify shipping costs per item, rates for different zones etc. You will receive an email as each order comes in and you can manage the process like this initially if you wish. However as business increases, you may wish to consider investing in an eCommerce management system to streamline this process for you.
To make Step 6 even easier, simply sign up to a free 30 day trial with Appath and let us manage this process for you.